MetaFilter posts tagged with piracyhttp://www.metafilter.com/tags/piracy
Posts tagged with 'piracy' at MetaFilter.Tue, 06 Sep 2016 16:50:14 -0800Tue, 06 Sep 2016 16:50:14 -0800en-ushttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss60"I don't want to spend a ton of money on a game that's bad..."http://www.metafilter.com/162097/I%2Ddont%2Dwant%2Dto%2Dspend%2Da%2Dton%2Dof%2Dmoney%2Don%2Da%2Dgame%2Dthats%2Dbad
<a href="http://www.pcgamer.com/the-state-of-pc-piracy-in-2016/">The State of PC Piracy in 2016 <small>[PC Gamer]</small></a> "Piracy seems like it should be so simple, right? Stealing games is wrong. The end. But piracy is one of the most charged, complex, and divisive debates in gaming. Follow a piracy discussion long enough and it will spiral through issues as complicated as international economic policy, the concept of 'ownership' for digital property, game preservation, and the principle of the PC as an unrestricted technology platform. Piracy in 2016, the age of digital distribution, indie gaming, and Steam's dominance, is a different animal from the PC piracy of 1990 or 2000 or 2010. Unlicensed software distribution is just as illegal as it was when Don't Copy That Floppy was a meaningful anti-piracy strategy, but our own understanding of the crime and its motivations haven't kept pace with technology." <strong>Related:</strong>
- PC Piracy Survey Results: 35 Percent of PC Gamers Pirate <small>[<a href="http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-piracy-survey-results-35-percent-of-pc-gamers-pirate/">PC Gamer</a>]</small> <blockquote>At some point in their lives, 90 percent of PC gamers have pirated a game. Almost 25 percent of PC gamers have pirated more than 50 games in their lifetimes. Those are two statistics from an anonymous survey we put up on PC Gamer two weeks ago after publishing an investigation into piracy in 2016. We hoped for a few thousand responses. We got 50,742, from PC gamers living in dozens of countries around the world. That's a lot of data. Before we dig into the results, it's important to note that this was an open survey, with nothing to stop the respondents from lying or taking it multiple times to skew the results. It's possible some respondents answered in bad faith—and we have identified where the results skew in jokey ways—but given the size of our response pool, we believe the resulting answers paint a credible picture of piracy in 2016.</blockquote>
- For A Brief Moment, Hackers Beat PC Gaming's Best Anti-Piracy Tech <small>[<a href="http://www.vice.com/read/hackers-have-found-a-new-weakness-in-pc-gaming-toughest-drm">Vice</a>]</small> <blockquote>It's been a rough year for gaming piracy. Denuvo <small>[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denuvo">wiki</a>]</small>, a relatively new form of Digital Data Rights Management (DRM), has been packed into a series of high-profile PC releases—Rise of the Tomb Raider, DOOM, Inside—and hasn't been broken. Some companies deploy DRM in order to prevent people from downloading games without paying for them. Conversely, other companies like the developer of The Witcher 3, believe DRM's restrictions are alienating and simply trust that most people will pay. For the games using Denuvo, however, piracy has became essentially nonexistent. But things shifted last Friday, when a Bulgarian 19-year-old hacker called Voksi found a loophole. "Its [sic] like the whole scene has come alive suddenly within 24 hours," said one reddit user. Thanks to Voksi, pirates were having a field day. Voksi's loophole used a demo that game developer id Software released for their DOOM reboot, which could be exploited into letting people play the full game without paying for it. This trick was quickly used to make games like Rise of the Tomb Raider (and others that had avoided piracy for months) free for anyone with an Internet connection.</blockquote>
- The Anti-Piracy Tech That's Giving Hackers Fits <small>[<a href="http://kotaku.com/the-anti-piracy-tech-thats-tearing-video-game-hackers-a-1759518600">Kotaku</a>]</small> <blockquote>Anti-tamper, according to Deunvo, is different from Digital Rights Management (DRM), which has a historically poor reputation with players. "Anti-tamper prevents the debugging, reverse engineering and changing of executable files," a company spokesperson told me recently. That's a confusing non-explanation about how Denuvo works. But since Denuvo seems to have pirates on their heels, they won't spill their dark secrets to me. [...] Denuvo uses a unique piggybacking approach. Because Steam and Origin require an Internet connection to buy, purchase, and authenticate a game the first time around, Denuvo can ride this wave and collect details about the computer to, in a sense, generate a unique key for that copy of the game. If the game isn't running on that exact machine, the game can assume the game's been pirated.</blockquote> tag:metafilter.com,2016:site.162097Tue, 06 Sep 2016 16:50:14 -0800FizzEl Paquete Semanalhttp://www.metafilter.com/161842/El%2DPaquete%2DSemanal
<a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-cuban-cdn/">The Cuban CDN</a> <em>El Paquete is a weekly service where someone (typically found through word of mouth) comes to your home with a disk (usually a 1TB external USB drive) containing a weekly download of the most recent films, soap operas, documentaries, sport, music, mobile apps, magazines, and even web sites.</em> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9352095/netflix-cuba-paquete-internet">Vox: This is Cuba's Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify – all without the internet</a> tag:metafilter.com,2016:site.161842Wed, 24 Aug 2016 11:53:20 -0800srboisvertyarrr.http://www.metafilter.com/156989/yarrr
<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/the-research-pirates-of-the-dark-web/461829/">The Research Pirates of the Dark Web</a> - "After getting <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-shutdown-of-libgen-bookfi-and-sci-hub-151102/">shut down</a> late last year, a <a href="http://sci-hub.io/">website</a> that allows free access to paywalled academic papers has <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-and-libgen-resurface-after-being-shut-down-151121/">sprung back up</a> in a shadowy <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/3bs1rm/meta_the_libgenscihub_thread_howtos_updates_and/">corner</a> of the Internet." tag:metafilter.com,2016:site.156989Tue, 09 Feb 2016 22:56:19 -0800the man of twists and turnsThe Pirate Bookhttp://www.metafilter.com/155874/The%2DPirate%2DBook
<a href="http://thepiratebook.net/">The Pirate Book: a digital zine about technology, media piracy, and international cultural exchange</a> tag:metafilter.com,2015:site.155874Mon, 28 Dec 2015 07:27:54 -0800overeducated_alligatorThe £240 million kidhttp://www.metafilter.com/155021/The%2D240%2Dmillion%2Dkid
<a href="http://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/blog/the-story-of-kane-robinson-the-man-who-cost-the-music-industry-240million">The story of Kane Robinson, the man who supposedly stole £240 million from the music industry.</a> Kane Robinson was a kid who loved the web and the Arctic Monkeys. His music forum Dancing Jesus became the target of the largest anti-piracy case ever seen in the UK. tag:metafilter.com,2015:site.155021Wed, 25 Nov 2015 12:07:48 -0800jontyjagoJason Derulo coming to your house to thank you personally Magnushttp://www.metafilter.com/152906/Jason%2DDerulo%2Dcoming%2Dto%2Dyour%2Dhouse%2Dto%2Dthank%2Dyou%2Dpersonally%2DMagnus
According this latest numbers from <a href="http://www.ifpi.org/global-statistics.php">IFPI</a>, <a href="http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/norway-uk-produce-worlds-valuable-music-fans/">while the music-buying audience in the USA is still the biggest in the world, the most valuable music fans are actually the proud people of Norway.</a> This may be due, in large part, to the fact that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/norway-music-piracy-statistics-2015-1">since 2009 piracy in Norway has plunged by 76%.</a> tag:metafilter.com,2015:site.152906Fri, 11 Sep 2015 06:26:33 -0800Potomac AvenuePiracy gave me a future.http://www.metafilter.com/152166/Piracy%2Dgave%2Dme%2Da%2Dfuture
<a href="http://boingboing.net/2015/08/16/piracy-gave-me-a-future.html">Poverty traps its victims in intellectual dead zones. I don't pirate games anymore, but when I needed it, it gave me access to the literature and artistic inspiration of my generation.</a> tag:metafilter.com,2015:site.152166Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:06:38 -0800ChurchHatesTuckerThe Man Who Broke the Music Businesshttp://www.metafilter.com/148999/The%2DMan%2DWho%2DBroke%2Dthe%2DMusic%2DBusiness
At work, [Bennie Lydell] Glover manufactured CDs for mass consumption. At home, he had spent more than two thousand dollars on burners and other hardware to produce them individually. His livelihood depended on continued demand for the product. But Glover had to wonder: if the MP3 could reproduce Tupac at one-eleventh the bandwidth, and if Tupac could then be distributed, free, on the Internet, what the hell was the point of a compact disk? <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-man-who-broke-the-music-business">SLNYer</a>. tag:metafilter.com,2015:site.148999Tue, 21 Apr 2015 03:54:01 -0800chavenetHere's yer new engine.http://www.metafilter.com/134641/Heres%2Dyer%2Dnew%2Dengine
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gslYChaeVOY&amp;list=PLGKwE9ggZ7wcRMsjq4T-7j9zECoaXWmTi">Piratjagt!</a> Discover what patrolling pirate infested waters off the coast of the Horn of Africa is like with the Danish Navy. (6lyt) tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.134641Tue, 10 Dec 2013 11:29:32 -0800allkindsoftimeHostis Humani Generishttp://www.metafilter.com/134455/Hostis%2DHumani%2DGeneris
The legal framework of terrorism has been ... complex. Under the Bush Administration, terrorists were deemd to be "<a href="http://www.cfr.org/international-law/enemy-combatants/p5312">unlawful enemy combatants</a>," and not afforded the protections of the <a href="http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/INTRO/375">III Geneva Convention</a>. The policy, thought <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/us/politics/14gitmo.html?_r=1&">not the name</a>, has continued under the Obama Adminstration, and this indeterminate legal status has <a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/01/terrorists-pirates-and-drug-traffickers-customary-international-law-and-u-s-criminal-prosecutions/">significantly complicated</a> efforts to <a href="http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2007/06/no-unlawful-enemy-combatants-at.php">try or release</a> them.
However, there is an <a href="http://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/international-law/b/international-law-blog/archive/2009/05/05/pirates-_2d00_-the-common-enemies-of-all_2c00_-the-enemies-of-the-human-race_2c00_-the-law-of-war-and-the-rule-of-law.aspx">older legal model</a> that may suffice: <a href="http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/July-August-2005/feature_burgess_julaug05.msp">piracy</a>. (<a href="https://www.metafilter.com/44412/Yarr-There-be-a-precedent">previously</a> Dictionary Of War: Hostis Humani Generis - <a href="http://dictionaryofwar.org/concepts/hostis_humani_generis">video</a> and <a href="http://www.altlawforum.org/node/265">text</a>
<a href="http://respondeat.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-piracy-analogy-and-modern-universal-jurisdiction/">The Piracy Analogy And Modern Universal Jurisdiction</a>
'A Guantanamo on the Sea': The Difficulties of Prosecuting Pirates and Terrorists: <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1371122">Abstract (SSRN)</a>, <a href="http://www.californialawreview.org/assets/pdfs/98-1/Kontorovich.pdf">California Law Review</a> (PDF)
Hostis Humani Generis: Piracy, Terrorism and a New International Law - <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/miaicr13&div=12&id=&page=">HeinOnline</a>, <a href="https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/14412/ubc_2003-0366.pdf">University Of British Colombia</a> (PDF)
Douglas Burgess in the <b>NYT</b>: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/opinion/05burgess.html?_r=0">Piracy Is Terrorism</a>
<a href="http://www.academia.edu/1790410/Ciceros_Ghost">Cicero's Ghost: Rethinking the Social Construction of Piracy</a>
<a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1519518">This legal framework</a> relies on the concept of "universal jurisdiction," that <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=yNO6ISkxSc8C&lpg=PA143&ots=-M5WPaMExK&dq=hostis%20humani%20generis%20terrorism&pg=PA143#v=onepage&q&f=false">some crimes</a> are crimes against all people, and any state can prosecute them, in any jurisdiction. This is rarely used against <a href="http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/02/the-offenses-clause-universal-jurisdiction-over-terrorists/">terrorist suspects</a>.
<a href="http://fabiusmaximus.com/2009/01/05/pirates-2/">More about pirates: why we no longer "hang them high"</a>
<a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Universal+jurisdiction+and+the+pirate:+time+for+an+old+couple+to+part-a0154817184">Universal jurisdiction and the pirate: time for an old couple to part.</a>
The concept of a person "<a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Lalor/llCy791.html">outside the law</a>" existed in English common law ("<a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/outlawry.htm">outlawry</a>") and <a href="http://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/28/access-to-the-margins-outlawry-and-narrative-spaces-in-medieval-icelandic-outlaw-sagas/">Iceland</a> (see also: <a href="http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/documents/innervate/09-10/0910hirschicelandicoutlaw.pdf">The Life Of An Icelandic Outlaw</a>(PDF)). In Republican Rome under Sulla, the <i>lex Cornelia</i> allowed for "<a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Proscriptio.html">proscription</a>" and was used to designate people not under state protection, whose murder would not be considered a crime.
"Thus you would not pay robbers a price that you had agreed to pay for your life; it is no wrong if you fail to do this after having promised with an oath. For a robber2 is not included in the list of belligerents, but is the common enemy of all. Between him and other men there ought to be neither mutual confidence nor binding oath." - Marcus Tullius Cicero, <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=542&chapter=83347&layout=html&Itemid=27">On Moral Duties (Book 3)</a>, turned into a bit of Latin by <a href="http://www.1902encyclopedia.com/P/PIR/piracy.html">Sir Edward Coke</a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=opRb0Wx-81sC&lpg=PA421&ots=LY2rdpgFJv&dq=edward%20coke%20hostis%20humani%20generis&pg=PA421#v=onepage&q=edward%20coke%20hostis%20humani%20generis&f=false">hostis humani generis</a> tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.134455Wed, 04 Dec 2013 18:56:48 -0800the man of twists and turnsPirates on J.D. Salinger's Oceanhttp://www.metafilter.com/134264/Pirates%2Don%2DJD%2DSalingers%2DOcean
"Three unpublished works by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger">J.D. Salinger</a>, including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ocean_Full_of_Bowling_Balls">The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls</a>, have been <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/28/5154324/jd-salinger-the-ocean-full-of-bowling-balls-pdf-leak">leaked online after showing up in an eBay auction.</a> Birthday Boy, Paula, and the aforementioned Ocean are three short stories that form part of a larger collection of Salinger works that was never published." Yesterday the stories were uploaded as a PDF to the exclusive private BitTorrent tracker <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/unpublished-salinger-books-leaked-to-private-file-sharing-site-131128/">What.cd</a>, which reportedly offered a 1TB-6TB download credit bounty for "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" by itself.
The other two stories, "Birthday Boy" and "Paula," are also available at University of Texas' <a href="http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingaid.cfm?eadid=00465">Ransom Center</a>, and have been <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/three-unpublished-jd-salinger-stories-have-allegedly-leaked">confirmed as authentic copies</a> by Salinger scholar Kenneth Slawenski.
Before now, "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" was only available to read in person under supervision at <a href="http://library.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone">Princeton University's</a> Firestone Library: "<a href="http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2010/02/24/pages/0232/">Firestone's unpublished, 18-page carbon copy</a> of the original typescript is a story about the death of Kenneth Caulfield, who appears as Holden Caulfield's brother Allie in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye">The Catcher in the Rye</a>."
<a href="http://www.themillions.com/2011/02/saving-salinger.html">Firestone Library</a> has <a href="http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132669-the-ocean-full-of-bowling-balls/transcript/">strict rules</a> for interested readers: "<a href="http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/topic/63828/">Visitors get copies, not originals.</a> You have to wash your hands when you arrive. No photocopying; no cameras; no laptops; no pens." tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.134264Thu, 28 Nov 2013 06:05:37 -0800nicebookrackLSE: Creative industries not harmed by digital sharinghttp://www.metafilter.com/132561/LSE%2DCreative%2Dindustries%2Dnot%2Dharmed%2Dby%2Ddigital%2Dsharing
<a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/documents/MPP/LSE-MPP-Policy-Brief-9-Copyright-and-Creation.pdf">A new report (pdf)</a> released by LSE's Media Department <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2013/09/CreativeIndustries.aspx">contradicts widespread claims about the decline of creative industries as a result of copyright infringement</a>. The report shows that the gaming, film and publishing industries are growing and new business models are emerging based on digital sharing. (See pages 7-8 of the report for figures.) "Key Messages:
The creative industries are innovating to adapt to a changing digital culture and evidence does not support claims about overall revenue reduction due to individual copyright infringement.
The experiences of other countries that have implemented punitive measures against individual online copyright infringers indicate that the approach does not have the impacts claimed by some in the creative industries.
A review of the UK Digital Economy Act 2010 is needed based on independent analysis of the social, cultural and political impacts of punitive copyright infringement measures
against citizens, and the overall experience of the creative industries."
***
"We published a policy brief on '<a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/33905/1/LSEMPPBrief1.pdf">Creative Destruction and Copyright Protection: Regulatory Responses to File-Sharing</a>' in 2011 that examined online copyright infringement, practices of file sharing and its consequences for the music industry.
Our key observations were:
1. Data provided by the music industry were misleading; contrary to what lobbying organisations were claiming, the music industry was doing reasonably well.
2. Declining sales of recorded music (mainly CDs) could also be explained by factors such as a squeeze on household expenditure on leisure goods and changing patterns of music consumption.
3.Declining sales of recorded music were offset by increasing revenue from live performances and growing digital revenues, including streaming services.
4. Intervention to enforce copyright infringement legislation on individual file sharers risks stifling innovation and criminalises a thriving online participatory culture." tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.132561Fri, 04 Oct 2013 04:04:43 -0800ersatzProperty, and thefthttp://www.metafilter.com/131720/Property%2Dand%2Dtheft
With roots in the laws of seventeenth and eighteenth-century England, <a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2013/09/locked-out/">intellectual property protections go back to the beginnings of capitalism itself.</a>
The online magazine <em><a href="http://jacobinmag.com/">Jacobin</a></em> recently featured a three-part series tracing the history of property law and its contemporary manifestations. For at least a decade, legal scholarship on gender bias in intellectual property rights has acknowledged the engagement of almost no one. Every academic paper published notes how small the field is; each researcher cites the two or three others they can; conferences feature the same key figures annually. Intellectual property rights is not a policy area to which women have paid much attention; nor have their cheerleaders, feminists.
Widespread feminine disinterest in this particular form of law is matched nearly equally by its disinterest in women. Current and historic protection under intellectual property legislation has restricted access to economic and cultural viability along gender lines. In recent decades, similar bias has been found and corrected in civil rights, family and employment law, and domestic violence legislation. IP laws sit at the crux of several debates raging right now: concerns regarding women in the literary arts, for example, and the wage gap. The paucity of strong female roles in TV and film. Gender bias in post-recession job hiring. The skimpy costumes of female characters in comic books. The global economic condition of women.
<a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2013/09/degendering-value/">Degendering Value: Gendered conceptions of credit and reward are written into the structures of intellectual property law</a>
The state's current approach to intellectual property has come under scrutiny of late, as its disconnect from anything that might have once legitimated it has become more and more obvious. The activities of rent-seeking patent trolls, who accumulate patents solely for the purpose of filing lawsuits, have been highlighted by National Public Radio's "Planet Money" program. And the absurdities of strict copyright enforcement are apparent in the life-destroying legal judgments leveled against small-time downloaders — $220,000 against Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe employee Jammie Thomas-Rasset for twenty-four songs, $675,000 against college student Joel Tenenbaum for thirty.
Faced with these outrages, it's tempting to demand the immediate destruction of the entire edifice of patent and copyright protection. All the more since intellectual property compounds the general socialist discomfort with private property, because the right it encodes is such an expansive one. No longer just the right to control a particular physical space or object, it abstracts the property form into the control of patterns and processes, wherever and whenever they appear. Instead of owning a book or a factory, the intellectually propertied class controls all copies of the book, and all implementations of the production process within the factory.
<a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2013/09/property-and-theft/">Property and Theft: The overthrow of all intellectual property leaves unanswered the question of how to control the exploitation of the cultural commons by digital capitalists</a>
In late June, soul musician Stevie Wonder flew to Morocco to perform at a diplomatic conference for the World Intellectual Property Organization. Conference delegates were signing a treaty granting small exceptions to international copyright protections, improving access for blind and visually impaired persons. Wonder said the treaty was important because it helped "information to be accessible forever," and it demonstrated "that it is possible to do business and do good at the same time."
Business leaders disagreed with this "Ebony and Ivory" vision of harmony and social justice. For months, organizations like the Intellectual Property Owners Association had urged American trade representatives to reject the treaty because, "despite substantial differences between copyrights and patent protection," allowing this exception might open the door to needy countries or people pleading exceptions for clean energy technology or pharmaceuticals. It would "threaten to upset the fundamental balance on which our US and global IP system is based."
The reference to "balance" here demonstrates that while piracy may occasionally be radical (see Gavin Mueller's "Gimme the Loot," from Jacobin, 7-8), copyright as a system is largely reactionary. Though "balance" can refer to the more utilitarian emphasis copyright is given in the US Constitution — a limited-term monopoly to "promote the useful arts and sciences" — in the mouths of the propertied elite, "balance" generally means that while they are willing to consider marginal tweaks to these arbitrary protections, they basically want to maintain the status quo in terms of property and power.
<a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2013/09/locked-out/">Locked Out: With roots in the laws of seventeenth and eighteenth-century England, intellectual property protections go back to the beginnings of capitalism itself</a> tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.131720Sat, 07 Sep 2013 10:10:25 -0800whyareyouatriangleJust give it to them, and collapsing mediumshttp://www.metafilter.com/131271/Just%2Dgive%2Dit%2Dto%2Dthem%2Dand%2Dcollapsing%2Dmediums
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ukYf_xvgc">Kevin Spacey urges TV channels to give control to viewers (SLYT)</a> tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.131271Sat, 24 Aug 2013 08:47:57 -0800whyareyouatriangleDidactic DRMhttp://www.metafilter.com/127499/Didactic%2DDRM
<a href="http://www.greenheartgames.com/">Game Dev Tycoon</a> was released yesterday; simultaneously, the makers Greenheart Games uploaded a <a href="http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/">slightly different version</a> of the game to torrent sites. tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.127499Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:50:06 -0800nicolas léonard sadi carnotplez donnut stelhttp://www.metafilter.com/127019/plez%2Ddonnut%2Dstel
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=plrcDeDa7LQ">Superb merbio bros. gr8 game 4 nintendy entertainment cycstem. u buy now! all copyroughts to nintendy corp.</a> <sub><i>the premise of the PSA is debatable, but the video is pretty cool!</i></sub> tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.127019Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:57:30 -0800codacorollaThe Atlantic - Benj Edwardshttp://www.metafilter.com/126004/The%2DAtlantic%2DBenj%2DEdwards
<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/the-copyright-rule-we-need-to-repeal-if-we-want-to-preserve-our-cultural-heritage/274049/">The Copyright Rule We Need to Repeal If We Want to Preserve Our Cultural Heritage</a> tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.126004Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:23:43 -0800East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94"Can anyone turn streaming music into a real business?"http://www.metafilter.com/125892/Can%2Danyone%2Dturn%2Dstreaming%2Dmusic%2Dinto%2Da%2Dreal%2Dbusiness
<a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/11/4080130/can-anyone-turn-streaming-music-into-a-real-business">The Verge has a nice article</a> looking at streaming as a business model (or not, of course...) "Do you think it's good or bad for the value of music if the only people who sell it don't care if they're making money on it?" David Pakman asks. "What you really want is an ecosystem with lots of financially healthy companies selling your product." Cue a lengthy <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/11/4080130/can-anyone-turn-streaming-music-into-a-real-business#149194565">flame war</a> in the comments about whether piracy, free music, etc., are good or bad things. tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.125892Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:34:36 -0800lucullusIt's a country opening uphttp://www.metafilter.com/125636/Its%2Da%2Dcountry%2Dopening%2Dup
The Pirate Bay has announced via a <a href="http://thepiratebay.se/blog/229">blog post</a> that they will be using North Korea as a haven to serve pages without facing prosecution from copyright authorities. <blockquote>
We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country's changing view of access to information. It's a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond. We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it's also ones duty to grab their hand.
</blockquote>
There are <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/mar/04/pirate-bay-north-korea">some doubts</a> about the whole situation - the "Kim Jung-Bay" signed blog post itself only suggests a "new provider", and while traceroutes <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9237323/The_Pirate_Bay_claims_39_virtual_asylum_39_in_North_Korea">have shown traffic</a> going through North Korea, though there is also a <a href="https://rdns.im/the-pirate-bay-north-korean-hosting-no-its-fake">thorough technical explanation</a> of how it could be faked. tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.125636Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:17:04 -080023Crowd funding is a lot like crowd surfinghttp://www.metafilter.com/125614/Crowd%2Dfunding%2Dis%2Da%2Dlot%2Dlike%2Dcrowd%2Dsurfing
<i>"And I fell into those thousands of connections that I'd made. And I asked the crowd to catch me."&nbsp; "When you connect with them people want to help you"</i> - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g">The art of asking</a> by Amanda Palmer <i>"I painted myself white one day, stood on a box, put a hat or can at my feet, and when someone came by and dropped in money, I handed them a flower and some intense eye contact."</i>
Bonus : <a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/05/preamble-to-photograph.html">Neil Gaiman</a> talks about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sW4dwXXX7Q">The Bed Song</a> tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.125614Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:32:47 -0800jeffburdgesArchitectural Piracy?http://www.metafilter.com/125045/Architectural%2DPiracy
How good is <a href="http://www.zaha-hadid.com/">Zaha Hadid's</a> new <a href="http://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/wangjing-soho/">building</a>? So good it's <a href="http://www.dezeen.com/2013/01/02/zaha-hadid-building-pirated-in-china/">already</a> being <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/pirated-copy-of-design-by-star-architect-hadid-being-built-in-china-a-874390.html">copied</a>. And the copy <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671581/zaha-hadid-races-to-finish-a-building-before-copycats-get-there-first#1">may</a> be finished before the original. <a href="http://www.dezeen.com/2012/08/02/pierres-vives-by-zaha-hadid/">Pierres Vives by Zaha Hadid</a>
<a href="http://adhamselim.blogspot.com/2011/09/tale-of-door-handle.html">The Tale Of A Door Handle</a> tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.125045Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:02:49 -0800the man of twists and turnsCopy Culture in the US and Germanyhttp://www.metafilter.com/123887/Copy%2DCulture%2Din%2Dthe%2DUS%2Dand%2DGermany
The American Assembly has released their much-anticipated and well-presented study on <a href="http://piracy.americanassembly.org/copy-culture-report/">Copy Culture</a>. The random phone survey of 2303 Americans and 1000 Germans answers many questions about the demographics and public perception of file sharing and piracy. TorrentFreak pulls out <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/study-maps-the-emerging-ethics-of-file-sharing-and-enforcement-130115/">some highlights</a>. tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.123887Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:08:10 -0800gilrainDownloaders delimmahttp://www.metafilter.com/122693/Downloaders%2Ddelimma
Long-time favorite usenet indexing site <a href="http://nzbmatrix.com/the_end.html">NzbMatrix</a> has closed its site as part of a recent sweep of DMCA related takedowns on similar sites. Other recent shutdowns include Newzbin, Newzbin2, and NZBsRUS. While primarily a blow to people making use of such software as <a href="http://sickbeard.com/">Sickbeard</a>, <a href="https://couchpota.to/">CouchPotato</a>, <a href="https://github.com/rembo10/headphones">Headphones</a>, and <a href="http://www.sabnzbd.org">Sabnzbd+</a>to automate their media downloads, the indexing sites provided a quick, user-friendly way to find media.
NZBmatrix and similar sites make use of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NZB">.nzb format</a>, originally associated with the site Newzbin (defunct)to automatically associate all individual postings required to make a complete file. Newsgroup posting are historically broken into dozens-to-hundreds of individual files, often only 1.44Mb each, from back in the days when portable storage was limited to what could be found on a HD Floppy disk.
Some usenet users have always felt the sites presented a danger to the usenet community at large, simply because their ease of use attracted "n00bs" to the service and made it easy for copyright holders to issue DMCA takedowns for illicit media.
Other indexing sites exist, and enterprising users can take it upon themselves to host their own indexes via LAMP-based software like <a href="http://www.newznab.com/">Newznab.</a>
Initial reports indicate that the <a href="http://www.morganelligroup.com">Morganelli group</a> may have played a role in the takedown, however their<a href="https://twitter.com/Morganelli">twitter feed says differently.</a> That same twitter feed is currently being subjected to much hate from users of the offending websites. The Morganelli Group exists to aid copyright holders by monitoring "pirate" networks for copyrighted media and then disabling the files as soon as possible. tag:metafilter.com,2012:site.122693Sun, 09 Dec 2012 10:40:07 -0800TomMelee"Your app's anti-piracy module, it's not working"http://www.metafilter.com/122350/Your%2Dapps%2Dantipiracy%2Dmodule%2Dits%2Dnot%2Dworking
<a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/ios-apps-hijack-twitter-accounts-post-false-confessions-of-piracy/">An iOS application developer has come up with an extreme way of fighting software piracy—by auto-posting "confessions" to its users' Twitter accounts.</a> "...Enfour, the maker of a variety of dictionary apps, is auto-posting tweets to users' accounts to shame them for being pirates. But the auto-tweeting seems to be affecting a huge portion of its paid user base, not just those who actually stole the apps." <a href="http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/ios-dictionary-app-maker-working-on-new-way-to-shame-pirates/">Follow-up</a>. A personal account: <a href="http://infinitelives.net/2012/11/24/cant-spell-pirate-without-irate-on-drm-and-punishing-the-customer/">Can't spell "pirate" without "-irate": on DRM and punishing the customer</a> <blockquote>Enfour has since launched a "crucial maintenance release" to iTunes, and the issue has seemingly been resolved...
I found Enfour's accusation especially insulting given the price I paid for the software—US$55. That is to say, the iOS version of the Oxford Dictionary of English costs the equivalent of a dense printed-and-bound volume of the very same. Worse, I grumblingly upgraded from the 3G to the 4S a year ago explicitly to purchase this expensive dictionary software (in fact, it was the very first purchase I made in iTunes once I was home from the AT&amp;T store). I have frequently taken to Twitter to manufacture arguments over the cost of Enfour's Oxford application, always defending my purchase.
...I remember seeing the app's request pop up, and I'd simply assumed the dictionary had added some sort of social networking functionality, something like "share this crazy new word with your friends!" or whatever. (Enfour's software integrates very nicely with another app, the excellent Terminology, which does indeed include a "Twitter" button along with each definition.) At no point did Enfour disclose its intention to "post to Twitter on [my] behalf," however. The request seemed perfectly innocuous.
One user did deny Enfour this permission request, and he discovered that Oxford booted him from the software entirely. This is to say, he could not use Enfour's Oxford at all unless he granted the dictionary permission to humiliate him publicly.
Enfour has since admitted there was a "glitch" that caused "false positives" in the software. What's especially harrowing, though, is that Enfour apparently mined the data in the iPhone itself in an effort to determine, not whether Enfour's own software is pirated, but whether any software on the iOS device is pirated. This is ominous news for anyone with a jailbroken phone; for my own part, my device is perfectly legal (to a fault), but I do have a copy of TestFlight, a type of software that allows me to test beta builds of developers' apps.</blockquote> tag:metafilter.com,2012:site.122350Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:40:05 -0800flexBenn Jordan tries using the DMCAhttp://www.metafilter.com/120968/Benn%2DJordan%2Dtries%2Dusing%2Dthe%2DDMCA
<i>"These companies are willing to shove 1,000 attorneys down your throat if you share music, but won't even respond to a legal order about actual music theft and piracy."</i> -<a href="http://www.bennjordan.com/blog/?p=499">Benn Jordan</a> [<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/artist-cant-get-pirated-music-off-itunes-google-and-microsoft-stores-121016/">via</a>] Recent bonuses : <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/online-thug-dmcas-critics-site-off-the-internet-over-16-word-rant-121011/">DMCA's critic's site down over 16-word quote</a>. <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/dmca-notice-forces-1450000-education-blogs-offline-121016/">DMCA forces education blogs offline.</a> tag:metafilter.com,2012:site.120968Wed, 17 Oct 2012 06:16:22 -0800jeffburdges